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Procyon stopped outside with Ardath, in the relative safety of Blunt Street, in a ring of spectators. A knot of uniformed Earther police waited there, guns in evidence, along with a man in a gray Earther suit.
“Katherine,” that man said sternly.
The girl with Ardath ducked to her far side, seeking protection. “I’m not Katherine, and I’m not going with you.”
“You have to,” the man said. His face could be plastic. It had no expression, not even when Magdallen walked out of Michaelangelo’s between them and the police. Magdallen held out an object in his hand, a simple phone.
“You can call the governor. You don’t arrest anybody here. This is Council territory.”
“Take the boy, I don’t care. I’m authorized by this girl’s father to take her back.”
“And I don’t want to go with you!” the girl cried. “I’m with her! So is Noble!”
“She’s perfectly free to call her father,” Ardath said calmly, in a low voice that hushed the crowd. “Let himtell her. And we know who that is.”
Silence followed. Standstill. The tap buzzed in that silence, a steady, repetitive noise: “Go Brazisss. Procyon go Brazis.”
“Brazis,” Procyon said under his breath, and tried the tap, an effort that dizzied him, as a hand—Magdallen’s—slipped inside his elbow. “Sir. Brazis. We need help here.”
The man in the suit had one hand inside his pocket. He removed it carefully, and with the same slowness touched a communications unit on his gray collar. “I hear you,” the man said to someone, and then, no happier than before, signaled the uniformed police to stand down and put away the guns. To move back. Outsiderpolice stayed, still moving about inside, still mopping up.
The girl didn’t budge.
“Procyon,”his tap said suddenly.
“Sir.” His voice shook. It was surreal to speak to Brazis here, in public, with armed confusion around him. He wasn’t safe. He might never again be safe. “I’ve got a passenger. Another tap. I think, sir, I think it’s the ondat.”
While it said, in the same ear, “Brazis, Braziss. Hello.”
“We thought so,”Brazis said. We thought so.We thoughtso, jarred through him, an of-course acceptance that left him not a known fact in the universe. Marak,was what he wanted to ask, the only thing he wanted to know about, for himself. And couldn’t. Dared not.
“This is Antonio Brazis.”The voice wasn’t in his head, it was in the air, thundered like God from speakers all over the area. “We have visual identification of all persons in the area, with nine active warrants, two of which have already been served by our perso
Several individuals in the crowd melted away, fast. Another took out ru
Then a quieter voice, through the Project tap: “Report to the office, stat. No delays, no fuss. Just move. Now. No one will stop you.”
“Yes, sir,” Procyon said, and turned to the man who had taken his arm. Magdallen, his sister had called him. Slink. High-powered, deadly-armed slink, who’d quietly removed the knife from his hand. “I’m called in. I’m called in, sir.” He suspected a slink knew where, and why. Magdallen let go his arm, at least. “Let my sister alone.”
“Your sister has no problem with us,” Magdallen said quietly, and Procyon turned, threaded his way through a crowd that melted away in front of him, disheveled, coatless—cold, now that the adrenaline had run out.
“Procyon!”
He looked back at Ardath. “Love you. See you.” He didn’t believe it. He fixed that sight of her in memory, hoping he’d have a memory by tomorrow.
He turned and walked, then, the object of stares and hasty avoidance, and the three bots that dogged his steps zipped and dodged along with him. He couldn’t do anything about that. He didn’t know what choice he had. Report, not home, but to the office.
The office, he said to himself, and, walking down to the corner of Blunt and Grozny, turned onto Grozny, a very long way from the office, and just kept walking in the right direction.
He heard a hum behind him. An open Council police cab showed up and wanted him to get in.
“Go Braziss,”the voice in his head said, and he tapped into the office. “I’ve got an escort, sir. Bots. I don’t know if I dare take a cab. I don’t know what Kekellen will do if I lose them.”
“Can you walk?”
“I’m doing all right so far, sir,” he said, looking down that long, long street, Grozny, that eventually, under various names, led everywhere on the deck. It curved up as it reached a point of indistinction, floor becoming horizon.
It was a long way. But the police made no objection when with a “Sorry,” he wandered on. The police just trundled along in his neighborhood, like the three bots, and he kept moving.
SETHA REAUX SAT in his chair looking at the life-globe, watching a lizard catching gnats. Kathy was alive. He didn’t know what condition she was in. But Kathy was alive.
“She doesn’t want to come in,”Dortland had advised him, the dark spot in that most welcome news. “I tried, sir. I was confronted by an Outsider riot. She’s with Procyon Stafford’s sister—who does have a clean record. There’s another matter—-”
Dortland talked about Freethinkers. About the Movement suspects, both of whom were dead, with bots occupying the place, ripping up evidence, even taking the bodies apart, a
Kekellen had answered their request. Hadn’t he?
He never wanted to admit to that message he’d sent. Never wanted to, and hoped he never would have to. Whatever those dead bodies contained—Earth authority wouldn’t get hold of them, not now.
But Kathy was safe. With Stafford’s sister. Safe, with someone who might possibly talk cold sense into her stubborn young head. Kathy had refused to go anywhere with Dortland. Good sense in his daughter.
Dortland was only anxious, he suspected, to be told he was off the hook.
“You did your best,” Reaux said. Time to make peace with this man. To warm the atmosphere, at least enough for polite lies to take root and grow. Dortland in his debt might be useful and informative. “She’ll call. She’ll call when she’s ready. Come back to the office. I count it a success.”
He hung up. He sat waiting, wondering if he should call Antonio, if he dared call Antonio.
The phone beeped. “Sir.”It was Ernst. “The Chairman’s courier.”
He jabbed a button. “Send her in.”
Ernst let Jewel into the office.
“Are we safe here?” he asked, incongruous question, and she looked about her, seemed to take the local temperature.
“At the moment, sir. Sir, I’m in contact.”
“Antonio,” Reaux said. “Antonio. What news?”
“Moderately good,”Brazis said. “I can report your daughter is in a safe place. But you’ve heard that. The young woman is well reputed. A positive influence.”
“Is she safe there, from retaliation?”
“I have a close watch on her vicinity. There may be a few survivors still crawling the corridors, but I think their real desire now is to lie low and wait for a ship bound for Orb or anywhere else in the universe. We’re going to watch such ships very closely.”
“My full cooperation,” Reaux said earnestly. “But my daughter—forgive me: forgive me, sir. Is there any indication—of her health?”
“If there should be anything untoward, she’s with someone who can get her expert help. The boy who was with her, likewise. An i
“Thank God. Thank God for that.”
“Algol is dead: he was a known problem. Typhon, likewise dead—an import from Orb, capable of handling exotics, I’m told. Not now. He’s done, and every trace of biologicals with him.”